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Character Creation Guide
Use the following rules for generating your character in Fiend's Reach. Be sure to check out Variant Campaign Rules, Roleplay Point Options, and Homebrew and Banned Content for additional options, as well as to find out some of the extras used in Fiend's Reach. Make sure to use Myth Weavers for your character sheet too! Character Creation Rules First and foremost when making a character you should come up with a good story. Fiend's Reach is very flexible regarding character backstories. If your character washes up on the shores of the Harbor they can be from pretty much anywhere. The one stipulation is that the world that they come from must be 'Pathfinder adjacent'. What we mean by that, is that officially or not, the world your character comes from is in the same universe as Golarion (Pathfinder's default campaign setting). Alternatively, you may build a character that was born and raised in Fiend's Reach. Make sure their backstory gives them a reason to go out and adventure unlike their parents before them and their grand parents before them. Anyone born and raised in Fiend's Reach will try their best to squash this "adventurer's bug" that cropped up when the first ones washed up 20 years ago when raising a kid. It's your job to come up with a good enough reason for your character to defy this expectation and go to places best left forgot. All characters start out as adults for their race. Ability scores are generated with 25 point buy, but you may not take more than 1 Ability Score below 10 prior to applying racial modifiers. We use the Background Skill system. All characters have a background occupation. Select a bonus feat you qualify for that comes from this occupation (such as Power Attack for a Soldier occupation, or Skill Focus (Stealth) for a Scout occupation). Select two skills from this occupation as well (such as Survival and Perception for a Scout). These skills are added to your list of class skills. If they are already class skills, you gain a +1 competence bonus on them. Characters start with 2 traits, and may select a drawback to gain an additional trait. You may also select a major drawback to gain an extra starting feat. The Core, Standard, Featured, Uncommon, and Advanced races are allowed (except for any races that have a base fly speed, such as Strix). Level 1 characters start with 300 gp. Higher ECL starting characters start with their wealth by level. Characters always take maximum hit points per level. Evil characters, and characters with a high enough ECL may be subject to the PvP rules. Each player begins with 5 character slots. Additional character slots may be purchased with RP. Advancement Characters advance with the Medium XP progression. Instead of selecting a new level in a character class, you may select one of the following options that increase your ECL: Gestalt Gestalt is an option that allows you to create ‘hybrid’ classes that are the best of both worlds (better hp, saves, bab, and skills of two classes, as well as class features of both). When deterimining what benefits you receive from gestalt, compare the base attack bonus, base saves, number of skill ranks, and hit dice of the two classes. Your 'hybrid' class grants you the better of the two. You gain both classes class features unless said class features appear on both classes, in which case you take the better of the two progressions (e.g. a Slayer/Rogue gestalt character gains +1d6 sneak attack every odd level instead of every three levels). For purposes of gestalting, the Bonus Feat class feature and Spell Casting are always considered different class features (meaning that gestalting two spell casters, or two classes that grant bonus feats, grant the full amount for both classes). Note, a prestige class that grants "+1 spellcasting of an existing class" does count as the same class feature as the class it's advancing. If you're confused, feel free to ask about it in questions-and-answers channel on Discord. Characters may put their Experience Points into a separate Gestalt Track instead of their normal XP total. The Gestalt Track uses the Fast XP Progression instead of the Medium. Each time you would gain a level in your Gestalt Track, you gain one gestalt class level. When GMs list a level range for sessions, they will be expecting the higher level characters to have little gestalting, and the lower level characters to have a lot. Keep this in mind when signing up for sessions to avoid going into something that's way to dangerous, or prancing through a session outshining other PCs. You may only ever have up to 2 gestalt classes on a character and you cannot have more gestalt levels than you have normal class levels. If the experience rewards of a session would increase your gestalt level past your normal class levels, the experience is not wasted, but you do not gain the benefits of the gestalt class until your actual class levels catch up. Normally you may only use statistics coming from your Main XP track to qualify for prestige classes. You may circumvent this by spending RP in the store. In either case, you may not take levels in a prestige class with your gestalt levels (but you may take gestalt levels along side a prestige class). Templates With an application and some RP, Paizo templates can be added to PCs in just the same way that they can be added to monsters. To gain your first template you must pay 500 RP, or 700 RP for undead templates plus an additional amount based upon the template itself. Any template that gives a natural armor bonus instead gives a "Template bonus to Natural Armor". This means that natural armor bonuses from different templates do not stack. Characters with a template that changes their type (not subtype) cannot take another template that changes their type. Final template costs will be adjusted by the Master of the Ban Hammer if/when they approve your template application. They increase the ECL of a character by the CR adjustment and count as having a number of character levels equal to the CR adjustment for experience point totals. Once approved, increase the characters Main XP track by an amount equal to the difference between their current ECL and the ECL that they're going to. For examlpe, a character with 275,000 XP (ECL 12) gains a +2 CR template. They then gain 225,000 XP (ECL 14 total xp 445,000 minus ECL 12 total xp 220,000). Characters must achieve any in game requirements that the template suggests (e.g. Alchemically Quickened characters must go through some sort of dangerous alchemical experiment to achieve the template). These often will be through a session, occult ritual, or both. You may request an Inherited templates a character long after the character is created or long before the template is actually applied to the character with experience points. In this case, the character must go through some sort of trial to awaken the inherited power the template provides. This is to explain why the character never exhibited the full benefits of the template prior to acquiring it with experience, as well as to mirror the requirements of an acquired template. Many templates will have an additional ECL requirement which may bar a character from getting the template until a higher level. A character may retroactively apply for an acquired template. This works the same as inherited templates above (i.e. they would need to go through an ordeal/trial/occult ritual to ‘activate’ the template). If they do need to wait on actually acquiring the template, they are not considered to have the template until then (e.g. a vampire's bite did not turn you, but later on you use that ordeal as a catalyst for later transforming into a fully fledged vampire). Templates with a variable CR adjustment that varies based upon the base creature’s CR or HD do not confer their higher CR adjustment bonus until the higher ECL is paid for. For example, a level 8 character applies for and receives the Half-Fiend template. Since the CR adjustment for Half-Fiend is +2 for creatures with 5-10 HD, the character would only need to spend 2 ECL worth of advancement on this template. When they reach level 11 (the next HD tier), they continue treating their HD as 10 for the purposes of the Half-Fiend template until they spend another 1 ECL worth of advancement on the template or go into level debt. You may suggest a custom or 3pp template to be added to the game as well. For custom templates, you must take an existing template to compare it to. This can be either by taking a template and tweaking it some, or by creating an entirely new template and showing how it compares to template with the same CR adjustment. The XP totals and adjustments to ECL directly affect the primary XP track (not the gestalt). Epic Destinies Once a character has achieved level 20 they may apply for an epic destiny. The linked destinies are not the only destinies out there, but should serve as a good starting point for forging your own epic destiny. Epic Destinies are the final chapters of a character’s career. Once the destiny is approved, the character has a limited amount of time left to complete their work in the mortal world (see End Game below). A character with an epic destiny gains the 1st tier boon when they achieve enough experience to become level 21 (not ECL 21). They gain their second boon when they have enough experience to become level 23, their third at enough experience for level 25, fourth and final boon at enough experience for level 27. They then complete their Final Destiny when they achieve enough experience to become level 29. Once they’ve achieved their final boon nothing can reforge their identity (no more purchasing Templates or Gestalt levels, so make sure to apply for them if you want them before you gain your final boon). When a character achieves their Final Destiny, they must retire (again, gaining the benefits of End Game below). A character that has reached the level for their Final Destiny is entitled one last session to see them out (usually done with a session request). Effects of Effective Character Level (ECL) Although the above options increase your ECL, (and the amount of experience points required to gain a new level in the case of templates), they do not count as levels for most purposes. This means that you do not gain additional feats, ability score increases, or any other level based benefits due to a boosted ECL. The exception to this is Wealth by Level. Use your ECL to determine your wealth by level for Automatic Bonus Progression if you opt into it, and for starting gold if you start at a higher ECL than 1st. Experience Points per Level Use the following chart to help you figure out experience points required to reach ECL, as well as wealth by level. # To gain an effective level beyond 20th, a character must double the experience points needed to achieve the previous level. # Characters cannot gain more than 20 gestalt levels. # Characters higher than ECL 20 treat their wealth by level as 880,000 gp for the purposes of Automatic Bonus Progression's costs. They do receive the automatic bonuses of levels 21 and 22 though. End Game When you’ve played a character for a long time, it makes sense for them to end their story. The character goes off into the Outer Sphere to challenge the gods; they finally achieve their magnum opus and retire; or maybe they finally just accept to leave the world to the mortals and die right and proper. Any and all of these scenarios can bring a satisfying and rewarding conclusion to a character’s career. This is also something that should reward the player as well. We all love to play our characters, and getting attached to a character that’s been played for months or maybe even years is no surprise. For this reason, if you retire a character you are afforded the following rewards: * X Patron Points per ECL (probably make X divisible by 4 so that those ¼ levels don’t go to waste). * Permission to play the character as an NPC in perpetuity. * The character immortalized on the wiki as a permanent fixture in the world. A special Discord title. Category:Character Category:Guide Category:Character Options